Athénée Palace

The Athénée Palace was built in 1912–1914. It was designed by the French architect Théophile Bradeau. Hilton International acquired it in 1995 and reopened it in 1997.

Describing the hotel as it looked in 1938, A. L. Easterman of London's Daily Express and later of the Daily Herald referred to its "heavily ornate furnishings, marble and gold pillars, great glittering chandeliers, and the deep settees placed well back in the recesses of the lounge as if inviting conspiracy."

The hotel was imortalised by Newsweek reporter Rosy (Countess) Waldeck in her book 'Athene Palace, HITLER'S "NEW ORDER" COMES TO RUMANIA' (1942). On the day that Paris fell to the Nazis, R. G. Waldeck was checking into the swankiest hotel in Bucharest, the Athene Palace. A cosmopolitan center during the war, the hotel was populated by Italian and German oilmen hoping to secure new business opportunities in Romania, international spies cloaked in fake identities, and Nazi officers.

The hotel was extended in the mid-1960s; the new structure was built away from the street side. The project team, comprising architect Nicolae Pruncu and engineers Radu Mircea and Mihai Ionescu, encountered severe technical difficulties in what concerned the binding of the old building with the new one.

The government-run Athénée Palace closed in 1994 and was bought at auction by Hilton International, who proceeded to do a $42 million renovation, reopening the hotel as the Athenee Palace Hilton Bucharest Hotel in 1997.

The Athénée Palace, designed by the French architect Théophile Bradeau, built 1912–1914, and modernized 1935–1937 by Duiliu Marcu, was the first building in Bucharest to use reinforced concrete construction; damaged by bombing in 1944, during World War II, it was completely remodeled in 1945 and extended around 1965, and again damaged in the Romanian Revolution of 1989 (some of whose worst violence occurred in the square immediately in front of the hotel). It was and remodeled yet again by Hilton International in 1995–1997.

Describing the hotel as it looked in 1938, A. L. Easterman of London's Daily Express and later of the Daily Herald referred to its "heavily ornate furnishings, marble and gold pillars, great glittering chandeliers, and the deep settees placed well back in the recesses of the lounge as if inviting conspiracy."

New York Times foreign correspondent C. L. Sulzberger wrote in his memoir A Long Row of Candles that as World War II was approaching, he settled into the Athénée Palace "to enjoy my wait for war… This was a comfortable establishment with excellent service…a corrupt staff always seeking to change a customer's money at black-market rates, and continual competition by ladies of easy or nonexistent virtue to share the warmth of a client's bed.”

Countess Rosy Waldeck wrote of the hotel in the same era, "Here was the heart of Bucharest, topographically, artistically, intellectually, politically—and, if you like, morally.” It was also home at the time to both British spies and the Gestapo.

A. L. Easterman called it the "most notorious caravanserai in all Europe. …the meeting place of the Continental spies, political conspirators, adventurers, concession hunters, and financial manipulators." ('Athene Palace, HITLER'S "NEW ORDER" COMES TO RUMANIA' (1942).

The hotel is a primary setting in Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy., which was later filmed as the 1987 BBC miniseries Fortunes of War, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. The miniseries was not shot at the hotel, but in Yugoslavia.

In 1948 the hotel was nationalized by the new Communist government, who famously bugged every room, tapped every phone (and every pay phone within half a mile), and staffed the entire hotel with informers. Dan Halpern writes, "The hotel's general director was an undercover colonel in the Securitate's Counterespionage Directorate; the hotel's deputy director was a colonel in the DIE, the Romanian external intelligence organization. The doormen did surveillance; the housekeeping staff photographed all documents in the guests' rooms. The prostitutes in the lobby and in the bar and in the nightclub reported directly to their employers; the free-speaking bons vivants and Romanian intellectuals hanging around the café, not to mention a number of the guests, had been planted."

The hotel was extended in the mid-1960s; the new structure was built away from the street side. The project team, comprising architect Nicolae Pruncu and engineers Radu Mircea and Mihai Ionescu, encountered severe technical difficulties in what concerned the binding of the old building with the new one.

The government-run Athénée Palace closed in 1994 and was bought at auction by Hilton International, who proceeded to do a $42 million renovation, reopening the hotel as the Athenee Palace Hilton Bucharest Hotel in 1997.

Happiness is made to be shared, knew the great French dramatist Jean Baptiste Racine (†1699).
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